On May 22, 2012 occurred
the launch of the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS). The
launch of the Falcon 9 rocket carried an unmanned
Dragon capsule. During the flight,
SpaceX's
Dragon capsule conducted a series of check-out
procedures to test and proved its systems, including the capability to
rendezvous and berth with the International Space Station. The primary
objectives for the flight included a flyby of the space station at a distance
of approximately 1.5 miles to validate the operation of sensors and flight
systems necessary for a safe rendezvous and approach. Following the
rendezvous on May 25, 2012
Dragon was captured and berthed to the station's
Harmony
node.The pressurized section carried 525 kg (1,157 lb) of cargo to the
ISS, which included food, water, clothing, cargo bags,
computer hardware, the NanoRacks Module 9 (student experiments and scientific
gear) and other miscellaneous cargo. No unpressurized cargo was delivered on
this mission. An unannounced addition to the cargo manifest, made public after
the launch, was a small canister, affixed to the second stage's top, containing
the 1-gram ash remains of over 300 people including Project Mercury Astronaut
Gordon Cooper, and James Doohan, the actor who played Scotty on the
television show Star Trek in the 1960s. The remains were flown semi-secretly by
Celestis, a company that has flown burial canisters in the past on
SpaceX's Falcon 1 launch vehicle.Dragon stayed for almost six days during which the
astronauts unloaded cargo, and then reloaded
Dragon with Earth-bound cargo. On May 31, 2012,
Dragon unberthed from the
ISS, its capsule landed in the Pacific Ocean off the
California coast and was recovered. All the objectives of the mission were
successfully completed, and the Falcon 9-Dragon system became certified to start regular cargo
delivery missions to the
ISS under the Commercial Resupply Services
program.On its return to Earth,
Dragon brought back 665 kg (1,466 lb) worth of
pressurized cargo back to Earth, the cargo included experiment samples,
experiment hardware,
ISS' systems hardware and Extravehicular Mobility Unit
hardware. One of the experiments returned by
Dragon was the Shear History Extensional Rheology
Experiment (SHERE) administered by
NASA's Glenn Research Center. SHERE investigated
rotational stress effects on polymer fluids. Items from SHERE included a
toolbox, fluid modules, stowage trays, cables and a keyboard, and science data
recordings. Another experiment returning with
Dragon was the Multi-user Droplet Combustion Apparatus
(MDCA), and the Combustion Integrated Rack-Fluids and Combustion Facility
(CIR). Another experiment returning at the end of this mission was the Material
Science Research Rack (MSRR), which investigated microgravity experiments on
aluminum-alloy rods. Returning from MSRR were cartridges from thermal and
vacuum investigations done on metal rods in the SETA-2 and the MSL-CETSOL and
MICAST studies.

Expedition 30 /
31 continued to expand the scope of research aboard the International Space
Station now that assembly of the orbiting laboratory is complete.

As
with prior expeditions, many investigations are designed to gather information
about the effects of long-duration spaceflight on the human body, which will
help us understand complicated processes such as immune systems with plans for
future exploration missions. The investigations cover human research;
biological and physical sciences; technology development; Earth observation;
and education.

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's Monitor of
All-sky X-ray Image (MAXI) investigation will be finishing up its stay on
the station. MAXI has been installed on the Exposed Facility (JEM
EF) of the Japanese
Kibo laboratory since Expedition 19/20, monitoring
more than 1,000 X-ray sources in space once every 96 minutes using slit
cameras, and has already produced significant results in the area of space
science. In 2010, MAXI, along with the SWIFT spacecraft, found two new X-ray
sources from its sky scans. Both instruments made the first observation of a
relativistic (moving at a velocity approaching the speed of light) X-ray burst
from a supermassive black hole destroying a star and creating a jet of
X-rays.

The Commercial Generic Bioprocessing Apparatus Science Insert
- 05 (CSI-05) Directional Plant Growth (also referred to as Plants in
Space) investigation is continuing, comparing plant growth on the ground (by
thousands of students in classrooms around the world) to plant growth in
microgravity on board the station. Results from this investigation will
continue to expand the knowledge base regarding how plants react in a
microgravity environment, using this information to support longduration deep
space missions providing food and oxygen generation. This also allows students
to work essentially side-byside with scientists and astronauts.

Space
radiation exposure is always a concern, and must be protected against. The
European Space Agency's Dose Distribution Inside the International Space
Station - 3D (DOSIS-3D) investigation will employ various active and
passive radiation detector devices to assemble a threedimensional dose
distribution map, of all segments of the station, to determine the radiation
field parameters dose and dose equivalent to assist in assessing radiation safe
exposure limits and exposure health risks. This investigation will provide
important information regarding devices used for data collection and real-time
data monitoring, proving valuable to commercial crews and military flight crews
regarding radiation monitoring.

As part of U.S. National Laboratory
activities on the station, Nanoracks modules provide autonomous,
self-contained experiments that can be flown quickly and inexpensively by
students, companies and other U.S. government agencies. Nanorack investigations
during this timeframe will look at exploring the use of readily available
commercial-off-the-shelf products and technologies (a smart phone and an
electronic book) in microgravity, remote control mechanisms and mechanical
devices, the behavior of 18S Ribosomal Ribonucleic Acid (RNA), and the MC3T3
mouse bone cell line, along with several student-based
investigations.

Earth science is also on the list of topics that
generates much interest, and there are many investigations involving this
aspect. AuroraMax (simultaneous photography of the aurora borealis from
the space station and ground-based observatories), Crew Earth Observations
(CEO) (photography of natural and man-made surface
changes), HREP-HICO (coastal imagery), and Geoflow-2 (studying
heat and flow currents in the Earth's mantle to better understand and predict
volcanic eruptions, plate tectonics and earthquakes) are all recording images,
many never seen before.

The Burning and Suppression of Solids
(BASS) investigation examines burning and extinction characteristics of a
wide variety of fuel samples in microgravity. Results from this investigation
will assist in devising strategies for extinguishing accidental fires in
microgravity, along with contributing to advances in fire detection and
suppression in microgravity and on Earth. Crew members will observe the burning
process, noting flame shape (as a function of flow speed), flame spread rate,
and flame dynamics, along with extinction data to be used for comparison to
modeling data. A nitrogen suppressant system is used as the means for flame
extinction.

Checkout and testing of hand motions for Robonaut 2,
installed in the U.S.
Destiny
Laboratory, was planned for later this year.